Big Data should be the word of the year

bigdata_network

I heard Geoff Nunberg’s piece on NPR’s podcast and I got to say, although I’m pretty much big dated out from BBC Backstage (in a nice way) I’m in total agreement. Here’s a few key points… Well worth listening to in audio form…

Whether it’s explicitly mentioned or not, the Big Data phenomenon has been all over the news. It’s responsible for a lot of our anxieties about intrusions on our privacy, whether from the government’s anti-terrorist data sweeps or the ads that track us as we wander around the Web. It has even turned statistics into a sexy major. So if you haven’t heard the phrase yet, there’s still time — it will be around a lot longer than “gangnam style.”

What’s new is the way data is generated and processed. It’s like dust in that regard, too. We kick up clouds of it wherever we go. Cellphones and cable boxes; Google and Amazon, Facebook and Twitter; cable boxes and the cameras at stoplights; the bar codes on milk cartons; and the RFID chip that whips you through the toll plaza — each of them captures a sliver of what we’re doing, and nowadays they’re all calling home.

It’s only when all those little chunks are aggregated that they turn into Big Data; then the software called analytics can scour it for patterns. Epidemiologists watch for blips in Google queries to localize flu outbreaks; economists use them to spot shifts in consumer confidence. Police analytics comb over crime data looking for hot zones; security agencies comb over travel and credit card records looking for possible terrorists.

It’s the amalgamation of all that personal data that makes it possible for businesses to target their customers online and tailor their sales pitches to individual consumers. You idly click on an ad for a pair of red sneakers one morning, and they’ll stalk you to the end of your days. It makes me nostalgic for the age when cyberspace promised a liberating anonymity. I think of that famous 1993 New Yorker cartoon by Peter Steiner: “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” Now it’s more like, “On the Internet, everybody knows what brand of dog food you buy.”

We are not all…⸮

Stereotypical Geek

I retweeted this

OH: How can you spot an extroverted engineer?
They look at *your* shoes when they talk.

Ever since people have been getting at me for re-tweeting it. But then again I didn’t get to include my irony backwards questionmark ⸮ in the retweet

I understand the frustration but I mainly wanted to retweet it because I’m fed up of hearing this type of thing. And clearly its not just designers who are to blame.
Recently I was at a event which was well attended but a lot of the developers were saying how many people were not from engineering and development background. Then came the jokes…

A web designer walks into a bar, but immediately leaves in disgust upon noticing the tables layout.

How many designers does it take to change a lightbulb?

1 to call an engineer

And its not just jokes… its the other stuff which winds me up inside.

I understand its part of what we do as humans but seriously is it about time to over come some of this…?

Stereotyping…!!!

Geeks don’t all love Star Trek, Designers don’t all love Apples, Developers are not all introverted, Recruiters are not all evil, Architects are not all control freaks, Models are not all thick, etc, etc… Its almost 2013, its time we got over it all…